Vanden Plas
The Empyrean Equation of the Long Lost Things

I wondered what excitement a new Vanden Plas album could still generate. When a classic prog-metal band, that has never revolutionized or redesigned its sonic offering, announces a new album, you don’t expect a miracle, the album of the year, or a revolution. Probably the pre-release enthusiasm isn’t even that high, even though you’ll always be quite happy to listen to new music from a group that has left a mark on you.

So, I wasn’t searching for a miracle from Vanden Plas in 2024… and indeed there is no miracle because “The Empyrean Equation of the Long Lost Things” is once again a traditional prog-metal album without evolutionary peaks; however, it has something to say, yes, it has that kind of magic that somehow captures attention, engages the listener, and keeps them glued to their headphones for a long time. After all, there must be a reason why, despite its classicism, it has received enthusiastic comments and reviews. I tried to identify it and give my interpretation about it.

In thirty years of career, Vanden Plas have been protagonists of continuous maturation, constant perfection, we saw them emerge as a respectable and less flashy alternative to Dream Theater in the '90s and then strengthen their proposal by also dressing it with an increasingly conceptual and cinematic aura in the last decade. The more they progressed with the albums, the surprisingly stronger and more mature they became, practically going against what usually happens, as it is decidedly easier to see a band offer their best at the start and then quickly decline. But in the last two albums, the two chapters of “The Ghost Xperiment,” there was a sense that they, too, had hit the brakes, with tracks often artificially elongated, watered down, a bit too verbose.

You don't get the same sensation when you play the 55 minutes of this eleventh work. The choice to focus on a few articulated tracks this time has not proven questionable, the 6 songs of the batch flow very well this time. In the extended durations, the parts fit together marvelously, the individual segments follow one another with a naturalness that catches everyone's ears, naturalness that seemed to be missing in the two previous twin concepts. When transitioning from a heavier part to a lighter one, from a faster section to a slower one, from a more pounding part to a more melodic opening, there is never a sense of force, everything seems to arrive at the right moment, and the next fragment seems the perfect counterpart or the direct consequence of the previous one. We, therefore, have greater instrumental and rhythmic dynamism, with melodic and rhythmic variations becoming more sudden and less predictable, with the result that in the 10 minutes of “Sanctimonarium” or the over 8 of “The Sacrilegious Mind Machine” there is an incredible sense of fluidity, the minutes pass without the listener noticing, each track is a swirling vortex, and to make it even more engaging there is also a newfound melodic strength (yes, even melody seemed to have lost its touch).

The sense of rebirth, however, is also felt in the shorter tracks. “My Icarian Flight” may well be the simplest and most immediate track (Vanden Plas always place a few here and there), but in its relative simplicity and essentiality, it turns out to be surprisingly rich; it may be due to the airy keyboard layer or the robust central instrumental passages, but it gives the impression of not being just the "commercial single" of the album. In the last two works, the more immediate tracks appeared rather barren and weak, and when they seemed to have a good swing, the sense of restraint was missing, and they were unnecessarily extended beyond the 7 minutes. And then there is the semi-ballad “They Call Me God,” which may be the track I love the least, but its intensity crescendo has nothing to envy to a “Fireroses Dance” or a “Crown of Thorns.”

Thus far, the discussion seems to present something terribly ordinary, and fundamentally it is, yet this album also has a handful of things that somehow appear somewhat unexpected. For example, the long introductory title track was not exactly something foreseen: an almost entirely instrumental 8-minute track, with a dynamism never seen before, that anticipates some themes we will find later, behaving more like a long introduction rather than a real narrating track, who would have expected it?! But neither was the last of the 6 tracks, “March of the Saints,” predictable: the band touches 15 minutes for the first time but does so in an unusual way; reading such a length one imagines the classic sprawling prog-metal track, yet the melodic openings and slow parts prevail, with sporadic heavy inserts, and this restraint does not result in prolixity, because the band varies the theme each time, and every moment thus manages to stand out very well from the other.

There are also some surprises on an instrumental level. The most important concerns the use of keyboards, as for the first time in thirty years, the band has a new keyboardist; in the end, even the most long-lived and solid line-up (thirty years of a career always with the same formation is quite exceptional) had to face a lineup change, with the departure of the historic keyboardist Günter Werno and the recruitment of our own Alessandro Del Vecchio. It seems that the new member did not have a significant weight in the composition, yet I noticed something different in the use of keyboards, whether it’s his contribution or not matters little: shrill and distorted synth parts not typical of Vanden Plas, but also surprising is the choice to focus much on organ parts, never had a full-bodied and flamboyant organ dictated the law in their compositions. Additionally, there is a substantial reduction in those choral and cinematic parts that marked the last two decades of the band. Aside from this, I could not help but notice greater concessions to guitar solos, never so present and charged, but also an excellent performance on the drums, with drumming capable of offering atypical virtuosity.

However, I don’t want to convey the message of an epochal masterpiece or a perfect album, it also has its flaws and blemishes. There are some moments that are a bit verbose and drawn-out, for example, the last 3 minutes of “The Sacrilegious Mind Machine” are an avoidable repetition, as it wasn’t strictly necessary for “March of the Saints” to last 15 minutes, those melodic refrains with that bit of distorted guitar in the background are tiring over time, they are truly one of those solutions I digest with more difficulty; building a good slice of a track on them, I don't know if it's a 100% winning solution. There’s also the sense that some passages could have been better developed, technically and creatively… or maybe better this way, otherwise, they would have too comfortably ventured into Dream Theater territories?

These small adjustments created a bit of difficulty for many listens, I wandered in doubt whether to consider the album great or just another prog-metal chant, but then, however, I was immediately dragged by its incredible smoothness, which wins over everything.

Some have dared to call it the best album since “Christ 0” but it seems a bit exaggerated to me, especially since after that significant album, the band continued to grow in “The Seraphic Clockwork” and even more so in the two close chapters of “Netherworld,” with their epic and cinematic approach, only in the two “The Ghost Xperiment” was there a noticeable decline in inspiration. If I have to be measured, I would say that it's not an album to be overestimated as perhaps it has been a bit, Vanden Plas will certainly not rewrite the history of prog-metal in 2024, but I acknowledge they have produced a decidedly brilliant example of the genre, capable of surprising in its way.